Volatile Compounds

My shape beyond touch is naming
shadows over polar oceans and numbering
off your toes as you glide into a hazel
wood suspending on filaments oh
deux et machina but the spliced wood
is green and the hank of flesh stashed
on thorn hidden by the curve of
guided walks and the soft swell
that trespasses against fingers
in the outlet nothing more than
a drowned snake still warm to
the touch that bestows and so you glide
as the wood opens as a trick
that says here we are and
we being enough and the haze
is the updraft in the magicof gunpowder
and broken tissue paper and I lie
again crushed against blanked
off wall where the door was suspected
and if enough will be sent all out to depth.

Leo Mellor